Vielmetter Los Angeles Congratulates Sarah Cain and Yunhee Min for Metro Art Commissions
Congratulations to Sarah Cain and Yunhee Min who are selected for the Purple (D Line) Extension Transit Project with Metro Art. Sarah Cain is commissioned for the Century City/Constellation Station and Yunhee Min is commissioned for the Westwood/UCLA Station.
Genevieve Gaignard In Conversation with Roxane Gay
Join us Saturday, May 7th for a conversation between artist Genevieve Gaignard and author Roxane Gay on the occasion of Gaignard's exhibition "Strange Fruit". The talk begins at 5:30pm with a closing reception to follow.
Ellen Berkenblit Receives Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Award in Art
Congratulations to Ellen Berkenblit who is the 2022 recipient of the Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Award in Art from the American Academy of Arts and Letters!
Yunhee Min and Linda Besemer Receive 2022 Guggenheim Fellowships
Artists Yunhee Min and Linda Besemer are 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship Recipients for Fine Art.
Wangechi Mutu at Storm King
"The Storm King exhibition will feature bronze sculptures installed in the indoor and outdoor spaces of the centre that will aim to emphasise Mutu’s interest in the natural world, something that has “been present but not at the forefront of conversations around her work”, according to Nora Lawrence, the centre’s artistic director and chief curator.
“Mutu’s work is rooted in the idea of karmic power, or a future where humans have reconnected with the environment, where human and non-human elements merge and create a greater force because of their union,” Lawrence tells The Art Newspaper. “The landscape at Storm King is an ideal platform for understanding this facet of her work.”
The commission includes a monumental fountain spanning 15 ft. in length that will flank an area known as “museum hill”, a focal point of the sculpture park that offers panoramic views of the grounds and houses another iconic sculptural fountain, the work North South East West (1988/2009/2014-15) by Lynda Benglis. Mutu’s work will take the form of a water-filled canoe holding anthropomorphic female figures that are intertwined with tendrilous roots resembling mangroves."
By Gabriella Angeleti - 15 March 2022
Genevieve Gaignard at the Atlanta Contemporary
Genevieve Gaignard's solo exhibition “This is America: The Unsettling Contradictions in American Identity” curated by Karen Comer Lowe is on view through May 15, 2022 at the Atlanta Contemporary.
Deborah Roberts "I'm" Traveling to Art + Practice and CAAM
“Deborah Roberts: I’m,” features the artist’s mixed-media works and will be on view at Art + Practice from March 19 through August 20, 2022. In tandem, the artist’s figurative mural “Little man, little man,” 2020, will be installed on the walls in the California African American Museum's expansive lobby, encouraging viewers to travel between the two sites.
Rodney McMillian and Dave McKenzie in the 2022 Whitney Biennial
Vielmetter Los Angeles congratulates gallery artists Dave McKenzie and Rodney McMillian on their inclusion in the 2022 Whitney Biennial curated by David Breslin and Adrienne Edwards.
Edgar Arceneaux's "Boney Manilli" Performance February 18th
Vielmetter Los Angeles in collaboration with Studio Edgar Arceneaux presents a sneak preview of Arceneaux’s new play Boney Manilli to be staged as an outdoor performance and BBQ in the North parking lot at Vielmetter Los Angeles (1700 S Santa Fe Avenue, LA, CA) on February 18th, 2022 from 7-9pm.
Recently developed in residency at UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance (CAP UCLA), the sneak preview of Boney Manilli will be presented as a 30 minute work-in-progress immersive experience performed inside of a BBQ party, catered by QD’s Double Barrel BBQ. This is a private, ticketed event -- tickets are available via Eventbrite.
A nine-cast member play, Boney Manilli tells a story about the relationship between Sunny, a troubled playwright, and his mother, Momma. Sunny is trying to direct a play about the infamous pop group duo Milli Vanilli, while struggling to take care of Momma who is slowly dying from dementia. The rest of the family, on their own journey, searches for a missing script written by Momma’s father, Sunny Sr. The legend goes that Sunny Sr. wrote the script for the Disney movie Song of the South (1946) but was never credited for it. They hope to find the original script and sue Disney Studios but Momma hid it and can’t remember where. With original music, dance numbers and a BBQ, Boney Manilli is an epic tale traversing 100 years of history, both real and surreal, confronting family trauma and learning to let go.
Boney Manilli is supported by the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts and presented in association with CAP UCLA. The Boney Manilli sneak preview performance and BBQ is presented during Frieze LA and concurrently with Arceneaux’s solo exhibition of paintings and sculptures, “Skinning the Mirror” on view at Vielmetter Los Angeles through March 12th, 2022.
The full production of Boney Manilli is scheduled to make its official US premiere in 2023 at CAP UCLA. CAP UCLA received the prestigious Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts' Artist Project Grant for Arceneaux's project. Arceneaux is also the recipient of the COLA Individual Artist Fellowship in 2020.
Deborah Roberts and Genevieve Gaignard at the Blanton Museum
Deborah Roberts and Genevieve Gaignard are featured in "Assembly: New Acquisitions by Contemporary Black Artists" at the Blanton Museum of Art on view through May 8, 2022.
"Assembly includes paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs, textiles, and a monumental print, all produced between 1980 and 2019. Although diverse in style and subject matter, many of the works have ties to Southern history and reveal what scholar Saidiya Hartman refers to as “the long afterlife of slavery.” For example, the shared surname of two—unrelated—quiltmakers in the exhibition, Arie Pettway and Sally Mae Pettway Mixon, is that of the plantation owner their enslaved ancestors were forced to serve in Gee’s Bend, Alabama. Kevin Beasley’s resin sculpture incorporates raw cotton from his family’s farm in Virginia. Nari Ward’s immersive installation honors overlooked places, people, and traditions in Savannah, Georgia. Cauleen Smith made her recent neon work in memory of Sandra Bland, a Black woman who died in police custody after a routine traffic stop in Waller County, Texas.
The title of the presentation, Assembly, embraces the heterogeneity of work made by Black artists, refusing generalization, essentialization, and definitive interpretation. As theorized by the late British cultural critic Stuart Hall and expanded on by American philosopher Paul C. Taylor, with “assembly” comes the potential for disassembly and reassembly. In this gathering, we encounter acts of representation, resilience, reclamation, and resistance."
Sarah Cain Acquired by The National Gallery of Art
"The National Gallery of Art has acquired Sarah Cain’s Self-Portrait (2020), an exuberant, mixed-media abstract painting. The non-representational self-portrait is the first work by this original artist to enter the National Gallery’s collection.
Self-Portrait features a dynamic whorl of hard-edged colored bands creating curvilinear forms that alternate between foreground—for example, the large black band with drips that descend throughout the lower register—and background, as illustrated by the black translucent ground of smaller organic shapes. Cain incorporates an abstract vocabulary of form, color, and materials in this painting to create speculation about this painting’s meaning as a self-portrait. She sewed prismatic beads, given to her by her mother, into the center of the canvas as a kind of supportive, light-filled spine—an example of the personal symbolism in this work. Cain’s Self-Portrait painting brings the tradition of abstract painting into the present and continues a rich dialog with countless works in the National Gallery’s collection, including abstract works by artists Lynda Benglis, Ellsworth Kelly, Joan Mitchell, Amy Sillman, Joan Snyder, Frank Stella, and Richard Tuttle."
Rodney McMillian at The Bemis Center
Curated by Sylvie Fortin, I don’t know you like that: The Bodywork of Hospitality invites visitors to consider how hospitality has simultaneously circumscribed what we think bodies are, what we imagine they can do, how we feel they relate, whom we believe they can encounter, and ultimately, how they engage with each other and in the world. The exhibition explores these questions in space by weaving together open-ended experiential connections between works in a range of media, from painting, sculpture, textile, installation and performance to lens- and time-based practices. These works explore several questions, including pregnancy and surrogacy; transplantation, implantation and transfusion; neural adaptation and the phantom limb; bacteria and the microbiome; viruses, parasites, symbionts and holobionts; stem cells; mechanical and chemical prosthetics; architectures and protocols of corporeal hospitality; dreams and dreamwork; and the “miraculous” work of relics, spirits and energies. In the process, the exhibition reveals a storied genealogy that points to the extractive intersection of race, gender, class, religion and value. I don’t know you like that: The Bodywork of Hospitality critically excavates this legacy and offers up an expanded theater of operations.
The exhibition includes works by Ingrid Bachmann, Crystal Z Campbell, Jean-Charles de Quillacq, Heather Dewey-Hagborg, Stephanie Dinkins, Celina Eceiza, Adham Faramawy, Mounir Fatmi, Flis Holland, Oliver Husain, Rodney McMillian, Bridget Moser, Pedro Neves Marques, Berenice Olmedo, Kerstin Schroedinger, Jenna Sutela, Ana Torfs, and Francis Upritchard.
December 9, 2021 - March 19, 2022
Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts
Esther Pearl Watson at the Richmond Center for Visual Arts
The exhibition features Watson's body of work tackling everyday scenes of the artist's life during the pandemic. Curated by Indra Lācis, Director of Exhibitions.
"Both individually and as a cohesive timeline, the artist’s Pandemic Paintings invoke active forms of reflection and remembrance, as well as a sense of mutually shared vulnerability and participation in understanding the surreal and significant events of 2020."
Mary Reid Kelley & Patrick Kelley at The Fabric Workshop and Museum
Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley are celebrated for video works featuring a distinctively graphic black-and-white palette and scripted narratives in rhyming verse full of punning wordplay by characters brought to life onscreen by Mary. Centered around two new film works—Blood Moon and I’m Jackson Pollock—the exhibition explores the mechanics of power and its fallibility, each film presented in an immersive world and experienced through a darkly funny lens. Co-curated by Alec Unkovic, Exhibitions Manager, and Karen Patterson, Curator and Director of Exhibitions.
Pope L. at Portikus in Frankfurt
Vielmetter Los Angeles congratulates Pope.L on the opening of Misconceptions, his first solo video exhibition in Germany at Portikus in Frankfurt. The exhibition features a new video work titled Missverständnisse. It consists of several episodes produced in the format of a TV quiz show and filmed at Portikus and other places around Frankurt's city center. The exhibition is curated by Christina Lehnert.
Louise Fishman 1939 - 2021
It is with great sadness that we announce the passing away of artist and friend, Louise Fishman, at the age of 82. Our heartfelt condolences go out to her partner, Ingrid Nyeboe, her family, and her close community of friends, artists, poets, musicians, and spiritual practitioners.
Born in Philadelphia in 1939, Louise Fishman forged a unique and prolific career — five decades of consistently manifesting the energy and vision required to create a more aesthetically generous world. In lineage with such painters as Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, and Joan Mitchell as well as finding influence through friendships with artists Agnes Martin and Eva Hesse, Fishman developed an articulate and athletic approach to painterly abstraction merging the hard-edge objectivity of the grid and the gestural subjectivity of expressionism, all the while developing a language for art-making rooted in her identities as Jewish, feminist, and lesbian.
Working with Louise was an absolute honor; her distinguished career, her feminism, her activism, and her oeuvre of dynamic paintings are a combined act of fortitude and grace.
A retrospective of works on paper, A Question of Emphasis: Louise Fishman Drawing will be on view August 2021 — February 25, 2022, at the Krannert Art Museum, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Curated by Amy Powell, A Question of Emphasis: Louise Fishman Drawing will be the first career-spanning exhibition and publication of Fishman’s works on paper, including more than 100 works from the artist’s archive that have rarely been exhibited alongside significant institutional and private loans.
Raffi Kalenderian Acquired by The Georgia Museum of Art
Raffi Kalenderian's painting “Julia Perry,” 2020 was acquired by the Georgia Museum of Art in Athens, Georgia as a promised gift of John and Sara Shlesinger.
Dave McKenzie in Conversation with Adrienne Edwards
On the occasion of the exhibition Dave McKenzie: The Story I Tell Myself, McKenzie speaks with Adrienne Edwards, the Engell Speyer Family Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, to discuss his twenty-year practice, his artistic influences, and his recently completed Whitney-commissioned performance Disturbing the View.
Sarah Cain—Enter the Center
The Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery
Sarah Cain acquired by Orange County Museum of Art
"Zuckerman made operational changes to the building as well — mostly tweaks related to security, staff offices or visitor experience. She added five board trustees and nailed down the new opening date. She also began acquiring art, beginning with an “eight-talisman installation” by L.A. artist Sarah Cain.
“Eight is the number of infinite abundance,” Zuckerman says. “They’re painted dollar bills suspended from the ceiling with fishing wire. The backs are silver or gold and the fronts are vibrant [colors]. I tell our team, ‘Walk under them, tell them what you need!’”
By Deborah Vankin - 14 June 2021
Genevieve Gaignard in Beyond the Looking Glass at UTA Artist Space
UTA Artist Space is pleased to present Beyond the Looking Glass, a group exhibition of surrealist takes by women about women. Beyond the Looking Glass is curated by gallery director Zuzanna Ciolek, one of the first members of the UTA Fine Arts team when it was established in 2015.
The ambitious exhibition fills all three gallery spaces with bold works by a cross-generational group of fourteen women-identifying artists: Firelei Báez, Tawny Chatmon, Charlotte Colbert, Kim Dacres, Florine Démosthène, Genevieve Gaignard, Sanam Khatibi, Klara Kristalova, Shannon T. Lewis, Jesse Mockrin, GaHee Park, Hiba Schahbaz, Kiki Smith, and Jessica Stoller.
“While organizing this exhibition, I enjoyed poking holes in traditional standards of beauty in art and pop culture,” said exhibition curator and UTA Artist Space director Zuzanna Ciolek. “And within that playful and provocative framework, the show aims to explore contemporary femininity and representation.”
Beyond the Looking Glass presents a new lens for representation through surreal and uncanny artworks that address sexuality, race, and identity— radically defying solely ornamental representation. Taking inspiration from Alice in Wonderland, the title Beyond the Looking Glass is a twist on Through the Looking Glass, moving beyond a world where women are being seen as purely ornamental. The exhibition pulls viewers into an unexpected world filled with surrealist characters such as an elephant girl, a pink “C-section” vessel equipped with breasts, and a woman riding a reptile. While disrupting traditional portraiture of the Western Canon and confronting stereotypical representations of women, the figures portrayed transcend these societal constraints. With these archaic indicators of femininity stripped away, the surreal and expressionist imagery allows her to break out, expanding beyond the body.
Limited Edition Print by Math Bass
Vielmetter Los Angeles — in collaboration with Cultured Magazine — is pleased to announce the launch of a new editioned print by Los Angeles artist Math Bass.
This distinctly graphic print is from the artist's ongoing series entitled Newz!; a seamlessly sophisticated composition informed by the artist’s signature visual lexicon of symbols and shapes. Screen printing by Tom Kracauer, Los Angeles with additional lithography by Francesco Siqueiros (El Nopal Press). Printed on Coventry Rag; 100% cotton and acid free.
Math Bass "Newz!," 2021
Limited edition screen print + lithograph
21 x 19 inches (53.34 x 48.26 cm) paper size
Edition of 50; Signed, dated, editioned on verso
Courtesy of the artist, Vielmetter Los Angeles, and Cultured Magazine
Photo credit: Jeff McLane
2000 USD
Hugo McCloud at The Aldrich
The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum presents from where i stand, the first solo museum exhibition of Hugo McCloud. McCloud’s work has been defined by a restless experimentation, an ongoing engagement with process, an exploration of the value of labor, a concern with disparities in social and racial economics, and with the nature of beauty. McCloud’s earlier work can generally be categorized as abstraction, with its veiled subject matter growing out of his experiences of being biracial and his family’s working-class roots. These influences are evident in the materials and process he gravitates to—roofing metal, tar, and most recently plastic shopping bags. He has consistently used non-art mediums to encode social and cultural memory and to reflect on notions of race, class, and economic inequity. His latest figurative works, which were influenced by his move to Mexico in 2018, are composed of single-use plastic bags, depicting workers transporting towering piles of goods on bicycles, motorcycles, and their backs, as well as the overfilled carts of the homeless and indigent. Increasingly, his work speaks of the economics of labor and geopolitics on a fundamental level, while encapsulating the artist’s interest in global culture. from where i stand will occupy The Aldrich’s entire first floor and will include approximately thirty-five works borrowed from both private collections and the artist.
Karl Haendel Acquired by The Hammer Museum
Vielmetter Los Angeles is thrilled to announce the acquisition of Double Dominant 4 (Rodney McMillian), 2018 by the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. This drawing was included in Haendel's 2020 exhibition Double Dominant at Vielmetter Los Angeles.
The exhibition featured monumental drawings of the dominant hands, doubled, of 24 LA based artists of Haendel’s generation. These highly rendered drawings, for which the artist digitally manipulated the dominant hand of each subject to impossibly interact with itself, ask us to consider labor, time, human touch and individual style in relationship to the practice of making art. The project also reflects the artist's deep commitment to his community of artists, and the high value he places on dialogue and conversation within that community. A volume reproducing the complete set of works, published by Triangle Books with an essay by Natilee Harren, accompanied the exhibition.
Patrick Wilson included in Break + Bleed at San Jose Museum of Art
"Drawn primarily from SJMA’s permanent collection, Break + Bleed features both paintings and works on paper by historically significant artists who exemplify the spirit of post-painterly abstraction through an expansive range of styles including hard-edge abstraction, Color Field painting, Op art, Minimalism, and soft-edge abstraction. Artworks in this exhibition feature biomorphic and geometric shapes, angular and wavy lines, and lively planes of color. The work of Josef Albers—from his celebrated series devoted to the square, exploring the subjective experience of color—may be the most recognizable. For Karl Benjamin, interlocking and sometimes twisted shapes created energetic color associations and incongruous patterns. This exhibition also features contemporary artists like Linda Besemer, Patrick Wilson, and others who are pushing post-painterly abstraction into new territories."
Friday, June 4, 2021–Sunday, April 3, 2022
Organized by Rory Padeken, curator
Nicole Eisenman "Giant Without a Body" Now on View!
Vielmetter Los Angeles congratulates Nicole Eisenman on the opening of Giant without a body, a survey of the artist's work from 2006 through the present at the Astrup Fearnley Museet in Oslo.
Paul Mpagi Sepuya and Genevieve Gaignard in "Photo Flux" at Getty Center
Artists Paul Mpagi Sepuya and Genevieve Gaignard are featured in "Photo Flux: Unshuttering LA" at The Getty Center. On view May 25 - October 10, 2021.
"Photographs by 35 Los Angeles-based artists challenge ideals of beauty, representation, cultural capital, and objectivity. The artists in this exhibition, primarily people of color, have radically transformed photography to express their own aesthetics, identities, and narratives. Their work is foundational for an emerging generation of artists participating in the Getty Unshuttered program, which engages teens to seek photography as a platform to amplify social topics that resonate in their own lives."
Curated by jill moniz
Ruben Ochoa Fundraising Print II
Now available in our webshop: Ruben Ochoa's second limited-edition fundraising print supporting The Street Vendor Emergency Fund!
Your purchase of Ruben Ochoa's LACMA x Snapchat fundraising print directly supports the initiative of Inclusive Action's emergency Los Angeles Street Vendor Campaign. The funds from each individual print will translate directly to a $400 cash card for street vendors and their families, many of whom have not been eligible to receive direct pandemic relief funding from the government.
¡Vendedores, Presente! responds to L.A.’s shared history with street vendors. Ruben Ochoa draws attention to the region’s familiar fruit carts, paleteros, and flower stands creating a large-scale immersive environment that calls for solidarity with vendor advocacy. This project is part of LACMA × Snapchat: Monumental Perspectives.
Genevieve Gaignard in Girl You Want at ArtYard
"ArtYard is pleased to present, Girl You Want, curated by J. Vanessa Lyon and featuring artists Genevieve Gaignard, Julia Greenburger, Jen Liu, Josh Rabineau, Wendy and Beatrice Red Star, Karinne Smith, Ivy Stewart, and María Vargas Aguilar.
What’s a girl? What do you expect from a girl or want girlhood to be? How are girls un/made? Are they pieced together, imagined, constructed? This exhibition examines what girling looks and feels like through a range of representational strategies, from portraiture to speculative narrative; from dress to interiors and the prettified materials of commodification and colonization. In this show “girl” and “girly” are not offered as stable or essential but are rather understood as shifting states untethered to “sex” or even age."
Ruben Ochoa Event at LACMA
In celebration of Ruben Ochoa’s project for LACMA × Snapchat: Monumental Perspectives, view a short documentary series that follows street vendors as they unpack the history of the vending economy in Los Angeles, their efforts to organize and build sustainable businesses, the challenges and threats they face in this work environment, and the great impact the pandemic has had on this community.
Math Pearl Bass in Conversation April 30th
Join us for a FREE virtual conversation with Suzanne Hudson, Math Bass, and Christina Quarles (via Zoom) on April 30 at 5 pm PST! In her forthcoming book "Contemporary Painting" (Thames and Hudson, April 2021), Los Angeles-based art historian and critic Suzanne Hudson considers painting as a vibrant and sometimes contentious critic of a dynamic global society.
During this talk, Hudson is joined by two esteemed painters, Math Bass and Christina Quarles, featured in the book. This event is moderated by curator James Glisson from the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and Alexandra Terry from the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara.
Andrea Bowers: UC DAVIS Art Studio Visiting Artist Lecture Series
Wednesday, April 7 — 4:30 PM PDT
Through documenting contemporary activists focused on women’s rights, migrant justice, workers’ rights and climate justice, Andrea Bowers is committed to an intersectional feminism that dismantles gender privilege and builds community. Her multivalent art practice documents and honors the activists whose everyday actions forge meaningful change. Bowers is represented by Vielmetter Los Angeles, Andrew Kreps Gallery in New York, Capitain Petzel in Berlin, Kauffman Repetto in Milan, and Jessica Silverman in San Francisco.
To register please follow the link below.
The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery Acquires Works by Steve Roden
Congratulations to Steve Roden whose work has been acquired by The Frances Young Tang Teaching
Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College as part of a gift from Michael O. and Sirje Helder
Gold.
The gift includes works created in the 1990s
and 2000s by a diverse group of leading and
emerging artists, including Louise Bourgeois,
Sean Duffy, Naomi Fisher, Iva Gueorguieva,
Michelle Grabner, Carol Hepper, Steve Roden, Jonathan Seliger, Glen Seator, George Stoll, Beverly Semmes, and Barbara Takenaga.
Mary Kelly — Elson Lecture
The Elson Lecture Series features distinguished contemporary artists who are represented in the National Gallery of Art's permanent collection. On June 15, 2020, Kelly presented an overview of her career and discussed her artistic practice with Shelley Langdale, Curator & Head of Modern Prints and Drawings at the National Gallery of Art, Washington.
Stanya Kahn "No Go Backs" Featured in BFI London Film Festival
"Two teenagers traverse a post-apocalyptic California in this tale of an inherited wasteland, unprepared resilience and compassion, which points to the beginnings of a new future."
Paul Mpagi Sepuya 2019 Biennial Grant Recipient from The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation
"The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation revealed the 20 contemporary artists receiving its 2019 Biennial Grants, which come with an unrestricted $20,000 for each recipient. Past recipients of the prize are a veritable who’s-who of influential contemporary artists, and this year’s class is equally impressive."
By Benjamin Sutton - 12 May 2020
Now available: Paul Mpagi Sepuya Monograph
Now available though our new online shop at shop.vielmetter.com is Paul Mpagi Sepuya's monograph recently published by Aperture and the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis on the occasion of his first major museum survey exhibition. The monograph includes an interview with the artist by curator Wassan Al-Khudhairi as well as contributions by Malik Gaines, Lucy Gallun, Ariel Goldberg, Evan Moffitt, and Grace Wales Bonner. Check it out by following the Link below.
John Sonsini interviewed on NPR's Morning Edition
"In the current climate, people sometimes see themes of immigration in Sonsini's work. Men leaving home — working hard for money to send back to their families, separation for sustenance. Sonsini denies it. His art, he says, is not political."
By Susan Stamberg – 13 February 2020
Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley Named Visiting Professors at University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design
Vielmetter Los Angeles congratulates Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley on their appointment as the Keith L. and Kathy Sachs Visiting Professors in the Department of Fine Arts for the 2019 – 2020 Academic Year at The University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design. Mary and Pat will work with graduate students and will give a public lecture at Penn’s Institute of Contemporary Art in Spring 2020.
Paul Mpagi Sepuya interviewed by the Modern Art Notes Podcast
"Paul Mpagi Sepuya’s photographs of himself, his friends and his colleagues advance portraiture through layering, fragmentation, confusion and a certain kind of trompe l’oeil. They make us question what we see, how it’s constructed, and encourage us to contemplate the relationship between reality and artifice."
By Tyler Green – 02 January 2020
Tobias Vielmetter-Diekmann Joins Vielmetter Los Angeles in New Full Time Position as Senior Director of Development and Technology
We are happy to announce that Berlin based Tobias Vielmetter-Diekmann has moved to Los Angeles to join Vielmetter Los Angeles as Senior Director of Development and Technology. Tobias joins the team of Senior Directors Kevin Scholl, Ariel Pittman, and Michael Smoler.
Technology has been an important driver in the gallery’s development from the beginning and Tobias’ role will be to further advance the gallery’s operations by utilizing cutting-edge technological solutions. This will include enhancing our state-of-the-art data management and communications systems, optimizing the gallery’s internal workflow and its digital presence for years to come and thus creating substantial benefits for the gallery’s clients and artists represented.
Most recently, Tobias collaborated with Berlin-based strategic consultant and UX designer Konstantin Haubrok (https://haubrok.co) to redesign the gallery’s brand identity and communication for social media, online platforms and print publications. For the gallery’s move to the new downtown location, they developed a new layout for the gallery webpage, which delivers access from mobile devices and a greatly enhanced opportunity to explore the gallery’s programming, exhibitions, news, and portfolios of artists.
Tobias has been part of the team since the founding of the gallery in 2000, up to now working remotely from Berlin in various capacities including the directorship of the gallery’s former Berlin branch. He developed the gallery’s integrated inventory and address management system and has managed its online presence from the beginning. Tobias has also helped gallery artists with ambitious technology-based productions for exhibitions both at the gallery and in major institutions as well as implementing advanced studio archiving solutions and data management.
Tobias holds a degree in software engineering in addition to a BA in Museum Studies from Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft Berlin with graduate studies in Art and Visual History at Humboldt University of Berlin. He has worked as Director at Praz-Delavallade Gallery, Berlin, and assisted the Curator’s Office of the Neue Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Tobias is the founder of the inventory and contact management software WrkLst (https://wrklst.art), which offers cloud based integrated data management solutions for commercial galleries, artists, collectors, and museums and is being used by a wide range of private and institutional customers worldwide.
Mickalene Thomas named the 2020 Presidential Visiting Fellow in Fine Arts, Yale School of Art
Vielmetter Los Angeles congratulates Mickalene Thomas on her appointment as the 2020 Presidential Visiting Fellow in Fine Arts at the Yale School of Art.
Stavros Niarchos Foundation Dean Marta Kuzma notes: “We are honored to have Mickalene Thomas join the Yale School of Art faculty throughout 2020 as a black feminist artist whose practice contributes to the evolving conversation around post-blackness, sexuality and power. She is a fierce mentor who has supported emerging queer black artists, through fostering critical conversations and assisting with professional development.”
Genevieve Gaignard at the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara
Vielmetter Los Angeles congratulates Genevieve Gaignard on Bloom Projects: Genevieve Gaignard, Outside Looking In, a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara (March 5–May 31, 2020). This exhibition is curated by Alexandra Terry, Associate Curator, MCASB.
Rodney McMillian at The Underground Museum
Vielmetter Los Angeles congratulates Rodney McMillian on Brown: Videos from The Black Show, a solo exhibition at The Underground Museum (October 5, 2019–February 16, 2020). The exhibition is comprised of video works presented in the artist's major exhibition The Black Show at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia (2016).
Opening night will feature a performance by jazz musician, Alice Smith and a DJ set by Novena Carmel. The event is free and open to the public.
Ruben Ochoa public sculpture at the San Ysidro Land Port of Entry
Ruben Ochoa is one of five artists selected for the U.S. General Services Administration's Art in Architecture public art program at the San Ysidro Land Port of Entry at the US/Mexican border.
Ochoa’s work entitled “Mis Marcadores” takes its name and inspiration from conchas, a type of Mexican sweet bread (pan dulce) and the bread stamp, or “marcador”, that is used to create the bread’s signature crunchy shell-like pattern. Pan dulce has a special place in Mexico’s gastronomic landscape and is commonly enjoyed as an everyday breakfast snack (akin to doughnuts) and during the observance of special occasions such as the Day of the Dead.
Hayv Kahraman billboard for Expo Chicago
Hayv Kahraman is one of fifteen artists selected to participate in OVERRIDE | A Billboard Project, a citywide public art initiative presented by EXPO CHICAGO and the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE), displayed throughout Chicago’s City Digital Network (CDN). Kahraman's work will be projected through September 29.
Shana Lutker in CURRENT: LA FOOD
Vielmetter Los Angeles congratulates Shana Lutker on her installation in this year's CURRENT: LA, Los Angeles' public art triennial (October 5–November 3, 2019), themed "Food." Titled "Contemporary Museum of Temporary Containers (CMTC)" and located at Valley Plaza Recreation Center in North Hollywood, the installation is composed of single-use takeout containers painted a single color and organized by size, shape, or former contents. The work encourages creative reuse and considers the limits of sustainability and recycling at a critical juncture of environmental responsibility.
Liz Glynn commission for the San Francisco Arts Commission
Commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission, Liz Glynn presents a permanent public art installation "Terra-Techne" located at Harvey Milk Terminal 1 at the San Francisco International Airport.
"Terra-Techne" is intended as a monument to technological innovation and organic connectivity. The artwork consists of six suspended “tectonic plates”, each representing a different continent, from which an upside-down landscape projects from the underside of the continents while an abstract circuit board extrusion sits on the top.
Mary Kelly at the Weatherspoon Museum of Art
Mary Kelly: Selected Works, a solo exhibition by Mary Kelly, opens at the Weatherspoon Art Museum (WAM) in Greensboro, NC on September 28, 2019 and will remain on view through December 8, 2019. Kelly is currently a Falk Visiting Artist at WAM. This exhibition is organized by Dr. Emily Stamey, Curator of Exhibitions.
For more information, please visit the museum's website.
Wangechi Mutu commission for The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Vielmetter Los Angeles congratulates Wangechi Mutu on her commission for The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Fifth Avenue facade niches to inaugurate a new annual artist commission series.
For more information, please visit The Met's website.
Pope.L performance with Public Art Fund
On September 21, Public Art Fund will present Conquest, Pope.L’s largest group performance to date. Inspired by the artist’s iconic crawls in which he dragged his body across the urban landscape, Conquest will navigate the streets of Downtown Manhattan continuing the irreverent tradition of his more than 30 performative works that have taken place since 1978. In this iteration, a group of 100+ volunteer participants that reflect the cultural and demographic diversity of New York City will crawl in relay a nearly 1.5 mile-long route from the well-to-do West Village to the new granite steps of Union Square via the triumphal arch of Washington Square Park. In choosing to give up their physical privilege, participants satirize their own social and political advantage, creating a comic scene of struggle and vulnerability to share with the entire community. Public Art Fund's presentation will be the artist’s most ambitious yet, putting on full display the power and contradictions of collective expression.
Conquest is the free, outdoor component of Pope.L: Instigation, Aspiration, Perspiration – a trio of complementary exhibitions organized by Public Art Fund, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and The Museum of Modern Art. Addressing the artist’s boundary-breaking practice, the three-institution season of Pope.L’s work utilizes both public and private spaces, and will address issues and themes ranging from language and gender, to race, social struggle, and community.
Pope.L: Conquest is curated by Public Art Fund Director & Chief Curator Nicholas Baume, with Public Art Fund Assistant Curator Katerina Stathopoulou.
Vielmetter Los Angeles is expanding downtown!
With the opening of two additional exhibition spaces in our downtown location, Vielmetter Los Angeles is expanding the gallery in downtown Los Angeles to 24,000 sqf of exhibition space. We are closing the Culver City space as of July 6 and will be open by appointment until July 30.
Please note our new address and phone number below:
1700 S. Santa Fe Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90021
+1 213 623 3280
Our next opening will take place on Saturday, July 13, with a solo exhibition of Steve Roden’s work at the downtown gallery.
Mary Reid Kelley & Patrick Kelley at Studio Voltaire
Commissioned by Studio Voltaire, Rand/Goop (July 5–October 6) is a new large-scale installation at Studio Voltaire by Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley and marks the artists’ first institutional exhibition in London.
In Rand/Goop, the artists have created a circular narrative for six totemic video sculptures. The protagonists, all performed by Reid Kelley, speak in pithy and often capricious four–line cento poems. The contents are drawn entirely from two sources. Appraisals of Russian–American writer and philosopher Ayn Rand’s ‘Objectivism’ philosophies – limited only to evangelist scholars of her work – are spliced with titles of articles listed on the website of Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle, beauty and wellness brand Goop.
Sadie Benning, Nicole Eisenman, Rodney McMillian, Pope.L, and Paul Mpagi Sepuya at MOCA LA
Sadie Benning, Nicole Eisenman, Rodney McMillian, Pope.L, and Paul Mpagi Sepuya are included in the exhibition The Foundation of the Museum: MOCA's Collection at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles (May 19, 2019 - Jan 27, 2020). The exhibition is organized by Bennett Simpson, Senior Curator, with Rebecca Lowery, Assistant Curator, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
Amy Sillman at The Arts Club of Chicago
Featuring new and recent painting, Amy Sillman's first institutional exhibition in Chicago, Amy Sillman: The Nervous System (May 22–August 3, 2019) at The Arts Club of Chicago calls upon abstract and figurative motifs to address the material and emotional conditions of being human in fraught political times.
Liz Glynn commission for Bold Tendencies
Liz Glynn is included in Bold Tendencies' rooftop summer program (May 30 – September 21, 2019) in London with her project Unearthed Underground.
Unearthed Underground is a biomorphic network of tunnels spread over the Bold Tendencies' rooftop, some 22m wide and 15m long. The form of the network is taken from Joseph Bazalgette’s original London sewer system, tracing its tunnel network as it converges across London. Glynn’s installation uproots and re-casts this network onto the roof of the car park. The installation is marked by traces of the sewer's curious history: an inverted dinner party scene nodding to the three-hundred person banquet inaugurating the system, and a lost ceramic slipper from the Queen's parade through the tunnels. As a teenage punk in the 1990s, Glynn watched as indie and punk were subsumed by capitalism and now questions whether an "underground" is still possible under the regime of global capitalism. Inspired by the literature of Dostoyevsky, Victor Hugo and CS Lewis - places where the underground represents a darker, fantastic and utopian space - Glynn is equally concerned with historical cases of those members of society operating literally and figuratively in the shadows below ground. The curving forms of the tunnels represent a time before rational urban planning was introduced; in Victorian London, straightening and widening the crocked streets was considered part of a broader effort at moral reform targeting the lower classes. Glynn likens the act of uprooting this sewer – which doubles as a circulatory system – to the current political climate, where the festering discomforts plaguing a society can no longer be ignored.
Paul Mpagi Sepuya at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis
Organized by Wassan Al-Khudhairi, Chief Curator, with Misa Jeffereis, Assistant Curator, the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis presents Paul Mpagi Sepuya's first major museum survey (May 17 – August 18, 2019).The artist’s first monograph will be published by CAM for this exhibition, featuring contributions by Grace Wales Bonner, fashion designer; Malik Gaines, writer, performer, associate professor and director of undergraduate studies at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts; Lucy Gallun, assistant curator of the department of photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Ariel Goldberg, novelist, poet, and essayist; Evan Moffitt, writer, critic, and associate editor of Frieze; and Ikechukwu Onyewuenyi, writer and curatorial assistant at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.
Paul Mpagi Sepuya in the Whitney Biennial 2019
Vielmetter Los Angeles congratulates Paul Mpagi Sepuya for his participation in the Whitney Biennial.
Nicole Eisenman in the Whitney Biennial 2019
Vielmetter Los Angeles congratulates Nicole Eisenman on her participation in the Whitney Biennial 2019.
Wangechi Mutu in the Whitney Biennial 2019
Vielmetter Los Angeles congratulates Wangechi Mutu for her participation in the Whitney Biennial 2019.
Ellen Berkenblit at the MCA Chicago
Ellen Berkenblit will debut a mural titled Leopard's Lane for the latest installment of the MCA Chicago's second-floor lobby atrium project from May 4 to November 29, 2019. Leopard's Lane is organized by Michael Darling, James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator.
Edgar Arceneaux awarded Mike Kelley Foundation grant
Vielmetter Los Angeles congratulates Edgar Arceneaux for being awarded the Mike Kelly Foundation grant. The grant will support the production of the artist's new play "Boney Manilli," which will be debuted at the Ford Theater in August 2019.
Yunhee Min at the Hammer Museum
Organized by Anne Ellegood, senior curator at the Hammer Museum, Hammer Projects: Yunhee Min (March 28 – October 27, 2019) adapts the vibrant abstract imagery of her recent approach to painting to the steps of the lobby staircase, in the first Hammer Project to be oriented to the floor rather than the walls. Min completely alters the surface of the stairs themselves, while also making subtle modifications to the walls and lighting in the lobby to underscore how context impacts experience and enhance the visitors’ awareness of the architecture.
Samuel Levi Jones: Left of Center
Newfields, Indianapolis Museum of Art
Nicole Eisenman selected for the 58th Venice Biennale
Vielmetter Los Angeles congratulates Nicole Eisenman on her inclusion in the 58th Venice Biennale. The artist has been represented by the gallery since 2007 and will present works in the central exhibition May You Live In Interesting Times, curated by Ralph Rugoff. Works include Dark Light (2017) and Heading Down River on the USS J-Bone of an Ass (2017).
Nicole Eisenman (b. 1965) was a 2018 recipient of the Suzanne Deal Booth/FLAG Art Foundation prize, a 2015 recipient of the MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant” and the winner of the 2013 Carnegie Prize. Recent solo exhibitions include "Baden Baden Baden," Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden; “Dark Light,” “Now or Never,” Secession, Vienna, Austria; “Al-ugh-ories,” New Museum, New York; and “Dear Nemesis: Nicole Eisenman 1993 – 2013,” Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, ICA Philadelphia, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA. A suite of new sculptures, Sketch for a Fountain (2017), was prominently featured in the 2017 Münster Skulptur Projekt. Eisenman’s work has been included in numerous group exhibitions including the 2016 Biennale de Montreal; “American is Hard to See,” Whitney Museum of American Art; “Painting 2.0: Expression in the information Age,” Museum Brandhorst, Munich; “The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World,” Museum of Modern Art, New York; Manifesta 10, the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg; the 2013 Carnegie International; and the 2012 Whitney Biennial. She is participating in the 2019 Whitney Biennial.Deborah Roberts joins Vielmetter Los Angeles
Vielmetter Los Angeles is pleased to announce its representation of Deborah Roberts. The artist's inaugural exhibition with the gallery will open in April 2019 at our downtown location.
Deborah Roberts (b. 1962) lives and works in Austin, TX. Roberts makes collages using photographs, magazine clippings, and images from the internet, with a unique visual language evoking African-American womanhood to explore the subjects of beauty, identity and politics.
Roberts is the recipient of The Anonymous Was a Woman award was presented to Roberts in 2018. Forthcoming group exhibitions include ‘Cut and Paste: 400 Years of Collage', Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK (2019) and ‘Plumb Line: Charles White and the Contemporary', Californian African American Museum (CAAM), Los Angeles, USA (2019). Selected exhibitions include: 'Deborah Roberts: The Evolution of Mimi', Spelman Museum, Atlanta, Georgia, USA (2018); 'Reclamation! Pan-African from the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection', Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, Virginia, USA (2018); 'Talisman In The Age Of Difference', Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, UK (2018); 'Legacy of the Cool: A Tribute to Barkley L. Hendricks', MassArt, Boston, Massachusetts, USA (2018);' Constructing Identity in America (1766-2017)', Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey, USA; ‘Fictions, Studio Museum of Harlem', New York, New York, USA (2017); 'I know why the caged bird sings', Carver Museum, Austin, Texas, USA (2016); 'Gently Fried', MACC, Austin, Texas, USA (2015); 'The House on Mango Street', National Mexican American Museum, Chicago, Illinois, USA (2015).
Roberts' work is in the collections of Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Brooklyn Museum, New York; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; 21c Museum Hotels, Louisville, Kentucky; The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Saratoga Springs, New York; Block Museum of Art, Evanston, Illinois; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), Miami, Florida; LACMA, Los Angeles, California; Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, New Jersey; Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas; and Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, Ohio. She was a recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Grant in 2016.
Rodney McMillian solo exhibition at SFMOMA
Curated by Jenny Gheith (Assistant Curator of Painting and Sculpture at SFMOMA), New Work: Rodney McMillian (February 9 – June 9, 2019) at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art marks the artist's first solo museum presentation on the West Coast. In this exhibition, McMillian brings together his long-standing interest in the representation of the American landscape with an exploration of home as a place and a state of mind.
New Work: Rodney McMillian features a painted abstract panorama spanning the entirety of the gallery, paired with a soundscape interweaving iconic 1980s songs performed by McMillian and the voice of a social advocate proposing radically new language and polices around the condition of homelessness. This immersive installation questions the political systems that promise freedom and equality for all, and highlights the power of the individual to affect hope and create change.
Mary Kelly at DesertX
Mary Kelly's site-specific project for Desert X titled Peace is the Only Shelter returns to the Cold War intervention of Women Strike for Peach, a group formed in 1961 to protest against nuclear weapons testing in the Mojave Desert.
The project description reads: A long period of research led Mary Kelly to repurpose Cold War–era peace activism, in this case the anti-nuclear Women Strike for Peace (WSP), formed in 1961. This feminist group initiated lobbies, petitions, vigils, and demonstrations against nuclear testing. Between 1945 and 1992, the United States conducted more than 1,000 nuclear tests, mostly in the desert Southwest. The artist notes, “Although the radical peace initiatives of women in the early post-war period have been largely forgotten, the action-oriented interventions of the Women Strike for Peace set a precedent for the non-hierarchical politics of second-wave feminism, as well as the many prominent protest movements currently underway.” This counter-history takes on renewed significance amid today’s escalated tensions worldwide. A central feature of Kelly’s similarly public intervention is the so-called Doomsday Clock, whose hands tick closer to midnight as militarism rises and humanity inches closer to self-destruction. The allegory in Peace is the Only Shelter is reshaped as a bus shelter, itself a representative timetable. The intervention in public space calls attention to vestiges of the Cold War in our contemporary context, employing slogans from the WSP, where normally there would be advertisements, and cartographies of military expansion in the California desert, where there would be routes and schedules.
Locations:
531 S. Palm Canyon
33.815465, -116.546812
457-467 S. Indian Canyon Drive
33.816646, -116.545421
Southwest corner of Ramon Road and S. Indian Canyon Drive.
33.815720, -116.545957
Vielmetter Los Angeles Opens New Downtown Space
Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects is pleased to announce the opening of our new exhibition space in downtown Los Angeles. Spanning the entire length of 1700 South Santa Fe Avenue, the 11,000 sf warehouse will host the gallery’s most ambitiously scaled exhibitions and provides additional space for both a screening and reading room. It will be used as a second exhibition space in addition to our Culver City gallery. The gallery design was developed in collaboration with TOLO Architecture and Anderson Studio.
The gallery will open during Frieze LA with a preview on Friday, February 15, 2019, and will open to the public on Saturday, February 16. The inaugural exhibition will feature new and historic works by artists from the gallery’s roster: Edgar Arceneaux, Sadie Benning, Andrea Bowers, Kim Dingle, Sean Duffy, Nicole Eisenman, Charles Gaines, Karl Haendel, Stanya Kahn, Mary Kelly, Rodney McMillian, Wangechi Mutu, Ruben Ochoa, Pope.L, Amy Sillman, and Nicola Tyson. The inaugural exhibition will be followed by solo exhibitions of new work by Arlene Shechet, Deborah Roberts, Sam Levi Jones, Genevieve Gaignard, Andrea Bowers, Shana Lutker, and Liz Glynn.
The downtown gallery is located at 1700 S Santa Fe Avenue, just south of the 10 freeway. Limited parking is available on the north parking lot adjacent to the building. Visitors to the opening are encouraged to use ride sharing services.
Paul Mpagi Sepuya joins Vielmetter Los Angeles
Vielmetter Los Angeles is pleased to announce its representation of Paul Mpagi Sepuya. The artist's inaugural exhibition with the gallery will open in 2020.
Paul Mpagi Sepuya (b. 1982) is a Los Angeles-based artist working in photography. His work focuses on the production of portraiture in the artist’s studio as a site of homoerotic social relations, and the potential of blackness in the space of the “dark room.” His work emerged within the queer zine scene of the 2000s, he became known for his 2005 ¬– 2007 zine series “SHOOT” and first monograph “Beloved Object & Amorous Subject, Revisited” (2008).
Most recently his work has been included in “Being: New Photography 2018” at the Museum of Modern Art, solo museum exhibition “Double Enclosure” at FOAM Amsterdam and “Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon” at the New Museum. Other solo exhibitions include “Dark Room” at Document, Chicago (2018), “Dark Room” at team (bungalow) (2017), Los Angeles and “Figures, Grounds and Studies” at Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York City (2017). His first museum survey in the United States will open May 2019 at CAM St Louis. Sepuya’s work is in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney and Guggenheim Museums, The Studio Museum in Harlem and MOCA Los Angeles, among others.